The numismatic chronicle and journal of the Royal Numismatic Society

458 SIR ARTHUR EVANS.
denominations is indeed doomed to failure. Within
the limits given above, the same types are found constantly
varying in weight. They show the same
approximate module centring round 23 millimetres
with a margin of two or three in either direction.
The evidence ofcontemporary documents, indications
supplied by the coins themselves, and the harmony
of the monetary system represented by the value of
the siliquae and solidi, are only reconcilable with one
conclusion. In these silver " medallions " we should
recognize pieces having a^ theoretical value of ^ pound
silver though in truth, like the siliquae themselves,
of which they are the doubles, they were a coinage of
account.
But if all these units, including the so-called
"
medallions ", fitted thus into a simple and har-
monious system, where, it may be asked, are we to
look for the silver pieces known as " miliarensia "
so frequently referred to from the close of the fourth
century onwards ? The name itself, which clearly has
to do with reckonings in thousands or thousandths,
It has
seems to have been of old traditional usage. 23
been generally recognized as having been applied to
a silver coin = 1
T o oo of a pound of gold. It is possible,
as Seeck 24
suggests, that it was thus applied to the
denarius argenteus, a thousand of which, according
to Diocletian's abortive reform put forth in his Edictum
de pretiis rerum of 301, were equal to a pound of gold.
But the evidence of the attachment of the name to such
23 Mommsen, Monnaie Eomaine, ed. Blacas, iii, p. 82, n. 1, cites
the story preserved by Lydus (de Mens., iv. 2) that Scipio had
invented this piece when short of gold in his war against Hannibal.
24 " Die Munzpolitik Diocletians und seiner Nachfolger" (Zcit.f.
Num., xvii, pp. 36 seqq.).